Facebook, Google, the Internet and the Election

I've been utterly absorbed by the politics in the Unites States this summer, as have many of my fellow Americans, and now it is time to move to other things I'm very intrigued by the question of Facebook's impact on the results.

Did "fake news" run rampant on Facebook and tilt the election one way or another?

Mark Zuckerberg doesn't think so but they are looking in to it.  Read on:

https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10103253901916271

Here is a piece of that:

After the election, many people are asking whether fake news contributed to the result, and what our responsibility is to prevent fake news from spreading. These are very important questions and I care deeply about getting them right. I want to do my best to explain what we know here.

Of all the content on Facebook, more than 99% of what people see is authentic. Only a very small amount is fake news and hoaxes. The hoaxes that do exist are not limited to one partisan view, or even to politics. Overall, this makes it extremely unlikely hoaxes changed the outcome of this election in one direction or the other.

Is that all?

This is kind of an interesting place right?  We have only their word on this, really, because their internal workings are proprietary.  Yet, as a global utility for social communication their obligations run deep. Full transparency is called for here and I'm not seeing it yet.

One thing is clear to me, we aren't finished with this discussion.

Happy Reading,

J.W. Gant

PS  Important to note how much larger the story is.  Google has its own issues.  For example, in the days following the election if you googled for the election results the top hit would be a fake news site that incorrectly listed Trump with more votes than Clinton.  Wow.  That sort of mis-information is damaging.  Read on.

https://www.cnet.com/news/google-fake-news-election-donald-trump-popular-vote/